Nominations are open for the 14th annual Free Software Awards

BOSTON, October 4, 2011 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project today announced the opening of nominations for the 14th annual Free Software Awards.

Award for the Advancement of Free Software

The Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free
Software is presented annually by FSF president Richard Stallman to an
individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and
development of free software, through activities that accord with the
spirit of free software.

Last year, Rob Savoye was recognized with the Award for the
Advancement of Free Software for his contributions to compiler and
testing tools, and his leadership of the GNU Gnash project, a
fully-free replacement for Adobe Flash. Savoye joined a prestigious
list of previous winners including John Gilmore, Wietse Venema, Harald
Welte, Ted Ts'o, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Alan Cox, Larry
Lessig, Guido van Rossum, Brian Paul, Miguel de Icaza and Larry Wall.

Award for Projects of Social Benefit

Nominations are also open for the 2011 Award for Projects of Social
Benefit.

This award is presented to the project or team responsible for
applying free software, or the ideas of the free software movement, in
a project that intentionally and significantly benefits society in
other aspects of life.

We look to recognize projects or teams that encourage collaboration to
accomplish social tasks. A long-term commitment to one's project (or
the potential for a long-term commitment) is crucial to this end.

This award stresses the use of free software in the service of
humanity. We have deliberately chosen this broad criterion so that
many different areas of activity can be considered. However, one area
that is not included is that of free software itself. Projects with a
primary goal of promoting or advancing free software are not eligible
for this award (we honor those projects with our annual Award for the
Advancement of Free Software).

We will consider any project or team that uses free software or
its philosophy to address a goal important to society. To qualify, a
project must use free software, produce free documentation, or use the
idea of free software as defined in the Free Software
Definition. Work done commercially is eligible, but we will give
this award to the project or team that best utilizes resources for
society's greater benefit.

Last year, The Tor Project received this award, in recognition of its
work to fight against surveillance inflicted by increasingly
restrictive governments and to improve the safety and wellbeing of all
Internet citizens.

Previous winners have included the Internet Archive, Creative Commons,
Groklaw, the Sahana project, and Wikipedia.

Eligibility

In the case of both awards, previous winners are not eligible for
nomination, but renomination of other previous nominees is
encouraged. Only individuals are eligible for nomination for the
Advancement of Free Software Award (not projects), and only projects
can be nominated for the Social Benefit Award (not individuals).

The award committee has not been finalized, but is made up of previous
winners, free software activists and FSF president, Richard Stallman.

Please send your nominations to award-nominations@gnu.org, on or
before Monday, November 7th, 2011. Please submit nominations in the
following format:

In the email message subject line, either put the name of the person
you are nominating for the Award for Advancement of Free Software, or
put the name of the project for the Award for Projects of Social
Benefit.

Please include, in the body of your message, an explanation (40
lines or less) of the work done and why you think it is especially
important to the advancement of software freedom or how it benefits
society, respectively.

Please state, in the body of your message, where to find the
materials (e.g., software, manuals, or writing) which your nomination
is based on.

Information about the previous awards can be found at
http://www.fsf.org/awards. Winners will be recognized at an awards
ceremony at the LibrePlanet conference tentatively scheduled for March
2012, in Boston, Massachusetts.